University of Cape Town Institutional Repository

University of Cape Town Institutional Repository

OpenUCT is the open access institutional repository of the University of Cape Town (UCT). It makes available and digitally preserves the scholarly outputs produced at UCT, including theses and dissertations, journal articles, book chapters, technical and research reports, and open educational resources. The repository has been developed in line with international interoperability and metadata standards using DSpace open source software, and is indexed by all major search engines. It was launched in July 2014 and is an online academic research information service of UCT Libraries.

UCT first expressed its commitment to openness in April 2008 when it signed the Cape Town Declaration on Open Education. This commitment was further cemented in November 2011 when UCT signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. The mechanism to share the knowledge produced at UCT became a reality when Council adopted an Open Access Policy in March 2014.

The OpenUCT repository was developed as part of the broader OpenUCT Initiative, a project funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation.

For more information about UCT’s institutional repository, OpenUCT, browse through the OpenUCT FAQs.

FAQ

What are the benefits of an institutional repository?

An institutional repository benefits the institution, the researcher and anyone interested in scholarly outputs. From an institutional perspective it provides a record of scholarly activity taking place within the university. For a researcher, it creates stable and reliable records of your work, managed and stored in ways which meet international technical standards. Each item in the repository has a unique, persistent Internet address (called a Handle) and it can be found easily on major search engines.

 

What type of scholarly output can I add to OpenUCT?

The Repository includes:

• Journal articles, authored or edited books, book chapters
• Conference papers, textbooks
• Working papers, policy briefs and technical reports
• Teaching and learning materials and OERs such as lecture slides and course notes.
• UCT’s electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs).

Authors should use SHERPA/RoMEO to confirm individual publisher copyright policies and permissions.

What cannot be added to OpenUCT?

OpenUCT uses UCT’s Open Access Policy as a guide to determine what can be added to the Repository.

Items that will not be added to OpenUCT are:

• Preprints,   also known as author manuscript; and
• Annual Reports and institutional administrative material.

If you are uncertain about what should be added  to OpenUCT, contact the OpenUCToffice for assistance.

How easy is it to place my scholarly work in the repository?

Follow the steps in the OpenUCT submission guidelines. If you have any enquiries please send us an email.

What is a Creative Commons licence?

UCT’s Intellectual Property (IP) Policy states that it vests copyright in most work produced by its employees back in the creator. As the copyright owner of the work, you get to decide how it is distributed and what others can and cannot do with it. Creative Commons website provides a set of licences, which allow you as a creator to tell potential users of your copyright work how they can use it. They come with various provisions and levels of ‘openness’, and are a valuable tool for protecting both your rights as a creator and the rights of users and consumers of your work. There is also a guide, Creative Commons South Africa: Licensor Guidelines, which provides an easy walk-through to how to apply the different licenses to copyright material.

You can find out more about copyright generally and your IP rights as a UCT employee at the UCT Research Contracts and Intellectual Property Services page.

Will publishers allow me to place my article in a repository?

Most journal publishers now allow authors to deposit their papers in repositories. However, many publishers request that you DO NOT use the publisher version. You can negotiate with publishers to keep certain rights to your work, such as the right to redistribute, via an ‘author addendum to publication agreement’. Some publishers have an embargo period between publication and deposit in a repository. The SHERPA/RoMEO website gives details of publisher’s current policies on self-archiving and copyright.

What do I do when the publisher’s embargo period is different to that of the funder’s embargo?

If there is no agreement with the publisher on the embargo period then the publishers prescribed embargo period applies. Authors are urged to negotiate with the publisher via an ‘author addendum to publication agreement’ granting the publisher distribution rights.  In this way, the author retains copyright and gives the publisher rights to distribute the article. You may seek assistance from the Libraries in this regard.

What does the NRF require from the UCT grant holder in terms of articles published as per the grant requirement?

The NRF recommends that the grant holder make available the final peer- reviewed manuscript that has been accepted for publication, in full text, in an institutional repository (at UCT, the repository is OpenUCT). The NRF stipulates that the research data is preserved by the grant holder’s institution.

Can I submit my datasets to OpenUCT?

There are practical considerations to keep in mind: for example, if your files are very large, users might have trouble downloading them. UCT Libraries will offer services and information relating to data management planning. If you have a dataset you would like (or if it is a funders’ requirement) to archive and/or make available to the public, please contact UCT Libraries and we will work together to determine the best way to do that.

How can I be sure that placing my article in a repository will actually make it more widely available?

Internationally agreed standards for repositories ensure that they are interoperable. Metadata in a format compliant with the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) can be collected into databases of worldwide research, which users can then search.

A number of recent studies have demonstrated that publishing research open access will increase the number of times it is cited.

I put my published papers on my own/departmental website, so why should I deposit them in a repository?

UCT’s Open Access Policy encourages all scholarly work to be available in the institutional repository, OpenUCT. As all UCT’s websites migrate to the official web content management system, Drupal, the open access scholarship will be deposited in the Repository, OpenUCT.

Furthermore, your paper will be easier for others to find if it is in a repository using general search engines, such as Google, and academic search engines, such as Google Scholar and Oaister. The repository will offer services you might otherwise find difficult or time consuming to access. For example, it has better schemes for archiving and curation (digital preservation) than personal or departmental web pages. Also, the information held in a repository can be mined for a variety of purposes, for example, bibliometric analysis.

I am new to the University; can I add my previous work to OpenUCT?

The repository, OpenUCT, is intended to be a showcase of research undertaken at the University of Cape Town or by scholars associated with the University. We recommend that you deposit earlier work in the repositories of the institutions where you have previous affiliations.